2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE first drive: It leans!

MB's new E-Active Body Control softens bumps and can rock you out of sand

The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE gets either a turbo four or turbo inline six with a 48-volt electrical system.

As impressive as the 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE’s new 48-volt electrical and E-Active Body Control damping system is to experience, it’s almost more fun to watch from behind. In addition to comfort, sport and sport plus modes, the new GLE has a mode called curve, which preemptively leans the car into a turn almost like a motorcycle.

The E-ABC system reads the roads using scanners and navigation information and looks at the steering wheel position to tuck this mid-size SUV in as you enter a turn so the centrifugal force pulls you into the seat as opposed to into the door. This isn’t just a gimmick -- though the GLE has a few of those too -- from behind you can see the inside of the SUV dip several inches around a gradual sweeping turn. It doesn’t yet work fast enough to help you out on the slalom or on the race track. But we’d bet it will soon. It also needs the 48-volt electrical system, only available with the new inline-6 engine, to work as it does.

Did we mention it can rock itself out of deep sand? Take that Sahara Desert! Or Sleeping Bear Dunes!

The suspension system has 8 inches of travel from top to bottom and three levels of leaning. Curve is just comfort mode but with the leaning. Sport and sport plus modes do it too.

The GLE 350 4Matic and 450 4Matic go on sale in spring 2019. The rear-wheel drive GLE 350 goes on sale next summer. The GLE 350 gets Mercedes’ 2.0-liter turbocharged four making 255 hp and 273 lb-ft. That with a nine-speed automatic and all-wheel drive will get you to 60 mph in 7.1 seconds. The killer choice, though, is the company’s new, locomotive-smooth 3.0-liter turbocharged inline-six making 362 hp and 369 lb-ft. With Mercedes’ 48-volt system and electric EQ Boost adding up to 21 ponies it's good for a very respectable 5.5-second sprint to 60.

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The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE comes standard with two 12.3-inch screens.

The wheelbase of the GLE is 3.1 inches longer, leading to more rear seat room and since those seats have six-way adjustment, rear passengers will be even more comfortable. Speaking of seats, the front ones have what Mercedes calls seat kinematics, meaning they minutely adjust to get rid of pressure points. After doing about six hours in the cabin, they seem to work.

The interior is dominated by the twin 12.3-inch screens that come together to look like one flat piece of glass. Gesture control is included, as is the new “Hey Mercedes” function, which wakes up an AI assistant like Amazon's Alexa, and it will answer many questions, including vulgar ones. At one point I said something about the Mercedes without saying “hey” and it woke up. I then screamed “what the [email protected]#k!” as this was the third time it interrupted me, and then it gave me the Wikipedia quick definition of the word. Once we realized that was an option, we spent plenty of time trying to get it to say or define other things, and hilarity ensued. I would probably turn it off; you can always access the system through a button on steering wheel. But a new owner might want to play with it a little bit. The GLE also joins the optional third-row club, though we didn’t get a chance to test one out.

The first thing I notice is the gorgeous, large-grain,chocolate leather driver's seat. In this color, the way the headrest juts out, it sort of looks like E.T. The next things are the two huge screens; the central one is now touch-sensitive. It has a touchpad to control it too, but I’ll miss the big jog dial, which seems to be the perfect way to control these things. There are also redundant controls on the wheel. So, with gesture control, voice control, the big touchpad, the small touchpad on the wheel and the touchscreen, there are five, count ‘em, five ways to control the bright and colorful, customizable MBUX (Mercedes-Benz User Experience) infotainment system. The navigation setup is new with, wait for it, Pokemon Go-style augmented reality.

I pull out of the hotel in central San Antonio and the nav kicks up the first direction. As I approach my turn, the front camera view comes up, complete with blue floating street signs and black home addresses, as well as arrows for where I need to turn. It’s hard to take my eyes off it, and since those directions come one after another downtown, the camera stays on with different signs and arrows. It was very distracting, but only because those directions were so quick. I leave it on later in the drive -- it's also defeatable -- and the camera only comes up when I’m nearing my turn.

This GLE 450 4Matic, with the E-ABC and I6 is smooth, like S-Class smooth. The S-Class doesn’t even have E-ABC yet, so it might be smoother. It’s like rolling on a squishy cloud. That curve driving mode is super comfortable too and like automatic rev matching, once you hop on that dragon, it’s hard to get off.

In normal turns in a normal SUV, your body instinctively braces against the centrifugal force. With this Curve system, the GLE scans the road ahead, watches what your hands are doing and predictively leans into the turns for you. That means you’ll have to brace your body less, and that means you’ll be fresher after a cross country road trip through hill country.

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The 2020 Mercedes-Benz GLE 450 comes with the 48-volt system necessary to run the new E-Active Body Control.

I can feel it, but don’t appreciate how much the system helps until I turn it off (just like the auto rev matching). My driving partner and I start flopping all over the place in turns. Our stuff too -- with the system off my bag slides back and forth across the cargo area. With it on, it stays put. It’s quite impressive. It also scans for potholes and can react in milliseconds, and blah, blah, blah. But forget about that, it leans!

By the way, Mercedes has been working on this stuff for 40 years. No one should be surprised the company has always been a generation ahead of everyone else.

The turbo four is fine, strong even. I’m sure it would be acceptable for 85 percent of buyers. But this new I6, it’s just fantastic in everything I’ve driven it in. The engine makes max torque (369 lb-ft) at just 1,600 rpm. It combined with the nine-speed and E-ABC? Call the chauffer, Muffy.

The steering effort is easy in comfort mode, and gets a little more weighty in sport and sport plus. But the safety tech overshadows that, most of the time. It can read the road lines even when they get bad and follow the car in front nearly autonomously. You get a strong sense that if you just vanished, the GLE wouldn't notice. It wasn’t 100 percent though. A few times it let me go over the line, maybe twice on the outside and once on the inside. Also, like many of these systems, sometimes it pushes you towards the middle of the lane even when you’re trying to give a wide berth for a truck or trailer. That’s a little unsettling, but overall it's still a net positive in my eyes.

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With 8 inches of ride height change, a little stream is no problem.

The Takeaway

It’s hard to get excited about a midsize luxury SUV. But when one does it almost perfectly, like Mercedes has, it is notable. The curve control is truly impressive; the autonomous stuff is nearly there and the augmented reality, though a little gimmicky, can help in a situation when there are three lefts to take, one of which is right. But it is a little distracting otherwise. Still, if you’re in this market, and luxury, comfort and technology are high on your list (it also tows about 7,000 pounds), I think the GLE is the best option in a group of good utilities.